Abstract
This is the last of five books in the series on ‘Social Morphogenesis’. Contributors explore whether or not Late Modernity is transforming into a Morphogenic social formation and, insofar as morphogenetic processes are intensifying, do these promote or diminish human well-being (Eudaimonia). After summarizing the four main characteristics of a Morphogenic Society, as discussed in previous volumes, we ask what needs to be the case for it to foster the human flourishing of all and the Common Good. It is maintained that this hinges upon human ‘capacities’ being developed and ‘liabilities’ reduced in relation to people’s ‘concerns’ (what matters most to them). It is argued that without further-reaching equality and participation the zero-sum replication of winners and losers will continue, meaning new opportunities do not enhance the thriving of the many.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Nonetheless, it is worth a side glance at the post-Second World War development of cyberneticians because, to their credit, these were among the theorists who broke through the futile but prolonged divide among social scientists between materialism and idealism as to which was the motor of social change by simply brushing it aside. (these comments are found in more detail in Archer 2013b, Chap. 8.)
- 3.
I have maintained that Structure and Culture are entities with distinctive properties and powers that must not be elided. Doug Porpora makes the same point in his new book (2015).
- 4.
Nevertheless, ‘tendencies may be possessed and unexercised, exercised unrealized, and realized unperceived or undetected’.
- 5.
For example, between 1983 and 2009 the British Parliament approved over one hundred criminal justice bills and over 4000 new criminal offences were created. In response to that trend, the Ministry of Justice established a procedure to limit the designation of new crimes (Cabinet Office 2013).
- 6.
However, in Italy, their legal status was reinforced by the Good Samaritan Law.
- 7.
This is my own definition: ‘reflexivity is the regular exercise of the mental ability, shared by all normal people, to consider themselves in relation to their (social) contexts and vice versa’ (Archer 2007, p. 4).
- 8.
Donati’s Relational conception, one quite distinct from Emirbayer’s Manifesto for relationalism, whose denial of emergence, confines relations to an infinite series of transactions between people.
- 9.
They are not deprived of the human right to ‘good care’, which would be provided in a good society.
- 10.
This does not preclude them from benefitting from certain subsidiary features such as peaceful neighbourhoods or work relations, providing they do nothing to disrupt them.
- 11.
Note that this cannot be reduced to the individualistic terms in which the so-called ‘work-life’ balance is supposedly worked out by each employee in an organization.
- 12.
The 2016 Brexit Referendum illustrated everything about the ‘missing middle’, from the decision to call it, the blatant lies of all parties during it, to the sheer political ignorance of those voting for it.
- 13.
As Editor, I am acutely aware of having failed to do justice to the nuanced views and positions taken by individual friends and collaborators, especially in this final and summary volume, for which I apologise.
- 14.
The poorest three billion who contribute least to global warming do so because their poverty condemns them to traditional morphostatic practices for cooking and heating; what they suffer from are the carbon emissions of the rest and their novel appliances.
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Archer, M.S. (2017). Introduction: Has a Morphogenic Society Arrived?. In: Archer, M. (eds) Morphogenesis and Human Flourishing. Social Morphogenesis. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49469-2_1
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